Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (i want to read a book .txt) 📗
- Author: Charles Dickens
- Performer: 0141439564
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“here’s poor Clara’s supper, served out every night. Here’s her
allowance of bread, and here’s her slice of cheese, and here’s her
rum,—which I drink. This is Mr. Barley’s breakfast for tomorrow,
served out to be cooked. Two mutton-chops, three potatoes, some
split peas, a little flour, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt,
and all this black pepper. It’s stewed up together, and taken hot,
and it’s a nice thing for the gout, I should think!”
There was something so natural and winning in Clara’s resigned way
of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert pointed them out;
and something so confiding, loving, and innocent in her modest
manner of yielding herself to Herbert’s embracing arm; and
something so gentle in her, so much needing protection on Mill Pond
Bank, by Chinks’s Basin, and the Old Green Copper Ropewalk, with
Old Barley growling in the beam,—that I would not have undone the
engagement between her and Herbert for all the money in the
pocket-book I had never opened.
I was looking at her with pleasure and admiration, when suddenly
the growl swelled into a roar again, and a frightful bumping noise
was heard above, as if a giant with a wooden leg were trying to
bore it through the ceiling to come at us. Upon this Clara said to
Herbert, “Papa wants me, darling!” and ran away.
“There is an unconscionable old shark for you!” said Herbert. “What
do you suppose he wants now, Handel?”
“I don’t know,” said I. “Something to drink?”
“That’s it!” cried Herbert, as if I had made a guess of
extraordinary merit. “He keeps his grog ready mixed in a little tub
on the table. Wait a moment, and you’ll hear Clara lift him up to
take some. There he goes!” Another roar, with a prolonged shake
at the end. “Now,” said Herbert, as it was succeeded by silence,
“he’s drinking. Now,” said Herbert, as the growl resounded in the
beam once more, “he’s down again on his back!”
Clara returned soon afterwards, and Herbert accompanied me
up stairs to see our charge. As we passed Mr. Barley’s door, he was
heard hoarsely muttering within, in a strain that rose and fell
like wind, the following Refrain, in which I substitute good wishes
for something quite the reverse:—
“Ahoy! Bless your eyes, here’s old Bill Barley. Here’s old Bill
Barley, bless your eyes. Here’s old Bill Barley on the flat of his
back, by the Lord. Lying on the flat of his back like a drifting
old dead flounder, here’s your old Bill Barley, bless your eyes.
Ahoy! Bless you.”
In this strain of consolation, Herbert informed me the invisible
Barley would commune with himself by the day and night together;
Often, while it was light, having, at the same time, one eye at a
telescope which was fitted on his bed for the convenience of
sweeping the river.
In his two cabin rooms at the top of the house, which were fresh
and airy, and in which Mr. Barley was less audible than below, I
found Provis comfortably settled. He expressed no alarm, and seemed
to feel none that was worth mentioning; but it struck me that he
was softened,—indefinably, for I could not have said how, and could
never afterwards recall how when I tried, but certainly.
The opportunity that the day’s rest had given me for reflection
had resulted in my fully determining to say nothing to him
respecting Compeyson. For anything I knew, his animosity towards
the man might otherwise lead to his seeking him out and rushing on
his own destruction. Therefore, when Herbert and I sat down with
him by his fire, I asked him first of all whether he relied on
Wemmick’s judgment and sources of information?
“Ay, ay, dear boy!” he answered, with a grave nod, “Jaggers knows.”
“Then, I have talked with Wemmick,” said I, “and have come to tell
you what caution he gave me and what advice.”
This I did accurately, with the reservation just mentioned; and I
told him how Wemmick had heard, in Newgate prison (whether from
officers or prisoners I could not say), that he was under some
suspicion, and that my chambers had been watched; how Wemmick had
recommended his keeping close for a time, and my keeping away from
him; and what Wemmick had said about getting him abroad. I added,
that of course, when the time came, I should go with him, or should
follow close upon him, as might be safest in Wemmick’s judgment.
What was to follow that I did not touch upon; neither, indeed, was I
at all clear or comfortable about it in my own mind, now that I saw
him in that softer condition, and in declared peril for my sake. As
to altering my way of living by enlarging my expenses, I put it to
him whether in our present unsettled and difficult circumstances,
it would not be simply ridiculous, if it were no worse?
He could not deny this, and indeed was very reasonable throughout.
His coming back was a venture, he said, and he had always known it
to be a venture. He would do nothing to make it a desperate
venture, and he had very little fear of his safety with such good
help.
Herbert, who had been looking at the fire and pondering, here said
that something had come into his thoughts arising out of Wemmick’s
suggestion, which it might be worth while to pursue. “We are both
good watermen, Handel, and could take him down the river ourselves
when the right time comes. No boat would then be hired for the
purpose, and no boatmen; that would save at least a chance of
suspicion, and any chance is worth saving. Never mind the season;
don’t you think it might be a good thing if you began at once to
keep a boat at the Temple stairs, and were in the habit of rowing
up and down the river? You fall into that habit, and then who
notices or minds? Do it twenty or fifty times, and there is nothing
special in your doing it the twenty-first or fifty-first.”
I liked this scheme, and Provis was quite elated by it. We agreed
that it should be carried into execution, and that Provis should
never recognize us if we came below Bridge, and rowed past Mill Pond
Bank. But we further agreed that he should pull down the blind in
that part of his window which gave upon the east, whenever he saw
us and all was right.
Our conference being now ended, and everything arranged, I rose to
go; remarking to Herbert that he and I had better not go home
together, and that I would take half an hour’s start of him. “I
don’t like to leave you here,” I said to Provis, “though I cannot
doubt your being safer here than near me. Good by!”
“Dear boy,” he answered, clasping my hands, “I don’t know when we
may meet again, and I don’t like good by. Say good night!”
“Good night! Herbert will go regularly between us, and when the
time comes you may be certain I shall be ready. Good night, good
night!”
We thought it best that he should stay in his own rooms; and we
left him on the landing outside his door, holding a light over the
stair-rail to light us down stairs. Looking back at him, I thought
of the first night of his return, when our positions were reversed,
and when I little supposed my heart could ever be as heavy and
anxious at parting from him as it was now.
Old Barley was growling and swearing when we repassed his door,
with no appearance of having ceased or of meaning to cease. When we
got to the foot of the stairs, I asked Herbert whether he had
preserved the name of Provis. He replied, certainly not, and that
the lodger was Mr. Campbell. He also explained that the utmost known
of Mr. Campbell there was, that he (Herbert) had Mr. Campbell
consigned to him, and felt a strong personal interest in his being
well cared for, and living a secluded life. So, when we went into
the parlor where Mrs. Whimple and Clara were seated at work, I said
nothing of my own interest in Mr. Campbell, but kept it to myself.
When I had taken leave of the pretty, gentle, dark-eyed girl, and of
the motherly woman who had not outlived her honest sympathy with a
little affair of true love, I felt as if the Old Green Copper
Ropewalk had grown quite a different place. Old Barley might be as
old as the hills, and might swear like a whole field of troopers,
but there were redeeming youth and trust and hope enough in
Chinks’s Basin to fill it to overflowing. And then I thought of
Estella, and of our parting, and went home very sadly.
All things were as quiet in the Temple as ever I had seen them. The
windows of the rooms on that side, lately occupied by Provis, were
dark and still, and there was no lounger in Garden Court. I walked
past the fountain twice or thrice before I descended the steps that
were between me and my rooms, but I was quite alone. Herbert, coming
to my bedside when he came in,—for I went straight to bed,
dispirited and fatigued,—made the same report. Opening one of the
windows after that, he looked out into the moonlight, and told me
that the pavement was a solemnly empty as the pavement of any
cathedral at that same hour.
Next day I set myself to get the boat. It was soon done, and the
boat was brought round to the Temple stairs, and lay where I could
reach her within a minute or two. Then, I began to go out as for
training and practice: sometimes alone, sometimes with Herbert. I
was often out in cold, rain, and sleet, but nobody took much note
of me after I had been out a few times. At first, I kept above
Blackfriars Bridge; but as the hours of the tide changed, I took
towards London Bridge. It was Old London Bridge in those days, and
at certain states of the tide there was a race and fall of water
there which gave it a bad reputation. But I knew well enough how to
“shoot’ the bridge after seeing it done, and so began to row about
among the shipping in the Pool, and down to Erith. The first time I
passed Mill Pond Bank, Herbert and I were pulling a pair of oars;
and, both in going and returning, we saw the blind towards the east
come down. Herbert was rarely there less frequently than three
times in a week, and he never brought me a single word of
intelligence that was at all alarming. Still, I knew that there was
cause for alarm, and I could not get rid of the notion of being
watched. Once received, it is a haunting idea; how many undesigning
persons I suspected of watching me, it would be hard to calculate.
In short, I was always full of fears for the rash man who was in
hiding. Herbert had sometimes said to me that he found it pleasant
to stand at one of our windows after dark, when the tide was
running down, and to think that it was flowing, with everything it
bore, towards Clara. But I thought with dread that it was flowing
towards Magwitch, and that any black mark on its surface might be
his pursuers, going swiftly, silently, and surely, to take him.
Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We waited for
Wemmick, and he made no sign. If I had never known him out of
Little Britain,
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